


cutting the strings

by doctorkaitlyn



Series: Ladies Bingo 2020 [22]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Blood, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/F, Imprisonment, Introspection, Past Relationship(s), Post-Episode: s01e10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 13:34:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30022560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: Pam never wanted to become a killer.
Relationships: Jeri Hogarth/Pam, Jeri Hogarth/Wendy Ross, Pam (Jessica Jones) & Wendy Ross
Series: Ladies Bingo 2020 [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956031
Collections: Ladies Bingo 2020





	cutting the strings

**Author's Note:**

> written for the 'identity crisis' square on my [Ladies Bingo 2020](https://ladiesbingo.dreamwidth.org/) bingo card! takes place after episode 10 of season 1. 
> 
> additional warning for vomiting, both discussion of and the act itself.

This isn’t the first time that Pam has been in jail. 

In the past, she has accompanied Jeri after hours, when one of their date nights was interrupted by an urgent phone call from a newly arrested client and it was either go with Jeri and collect some overtime pay or stay at her kitchen table picking away at dinner. But on those occasions, the furthest she ever ventured into the guts of the precincts was to the interview room, where she usually sat in a corner and took notes as Jeri spoke with a super-rich hotshot that had been caught doing something terrible enough that even they couldn’t escape the watchful eye of the law. On those occasions, even if she was stuck there for a few hours, she was eventually allowed to leave the place behind in her rear-view mirror and forget about it. 

Now, however, leaving is not an option. 

While she was lucky enough to get her own cell, she is far from the only occupant of the block. The enclosed space is a cacophony of sounds. The conversations being traded between cells have created a steady, humming undercurrent of noise, and on top of that, there are a few people intermittently screaming at the top of their lungs. No matter how many times one of those screams, filled with rage and fear and pain, splits the air, it takes Pam by surprise, and her shoulders are knotted with tension as a result. As if that all wasn’t enough, every so often, someone vomits, and each time it happens, Pam’s own stomach cramps in sympathy. 

She hasn’t thrown up yet, but she’s sure that, if she remains in this cell long enough, if she keeps stewing on the events of the last few hours, the last few _months_ , if she doesn’t find a way to distract herself, it’s bound to happen eventually. 

She moves from sitting with her back against the rough concrete wall to stretching out on the mattress. It’s short enough that her feet dangle over the edge if she stretches out fully and thin enough that the springs poke into her no matter how she lies, like sharp tipped fingers searching for her pressure points. Eventually, she manages to find a position that is semi-comfortable, and she closes her eyes against the harsh light pouring from the overhead bulb. 

She’s not tired enough to sleep, even though afternoon turned into evening a few hours ago (she suspects that it’ll probably be lights out soon), but she needs to do _something_ other than stare into the void or stand at the small, tarnished sink in the corner and scrub underneath her nails. Her hands ache from her earlier efforts, the skin raw and red, but she knows that, if she were to open her eyes and look, despite all of the work that she has put in, she would still be able to find blood underneath her fingernails. 

Wendy’s blood. 

Her stomach lurches again. 

Sure, she wanted Wendy out of the picture. She was continually frustrated by the fact that Wendy refused to let Jeri go out of pure spite, that she blackmailed Jeri and tried to milk her for every last dollar and every last one of her assets, assets that, by her own admission, she didn’t even _care_ about. Not to mention that Pam hated the way that Wendy looked at her whenever they happened to interact. The being talked down to, treated like she was a naïve child, was one thing, but even as Wendy spat barbed wire insults, she had looked at Pam with _pity_. She looked at her like she genuinely cared about and felt sorry for her, felt sorry that she had had the misfortune (although Pam wouldn’t have classified it as such at the time) to be drawn into Jeri’s life. 

But despite wanting Wendy gone, despite hoping and praying that she would just disappear, this wasn’t supposed to happen.

She never wanted blood on her hands. 

And she never would have believed that Jeri would put her in such a position. That she would be so reckless that she would willingly make a deal with a monster because it was _easier_ than continuing to fight. 

It’s only by sheer force of will that Pam is able to keep herself from scrambling across the room and throwing up. Instead, once she has ridden the wave of nausea and come through on the other side, her eyes start burning with tears, and she clenches her fingers into her mattress. Even though the tears feel scalding as they roll down her face and drip onto the bed, she refuses to wipe them away with her filthy hands. 

She never wanted to be a killer.

Secretary (or administrative assistant, depending on whether you went with her official job title or with Wendy’s disgusted words)? She was comfortable with that. She was _good_ at being an assistant, always had been. She was good at keeping people organized, at steering their lives and workflow so subtly that they never knew how much of an impact she had on them until she was gone. Sure, it wasn’t exactly the job she had dreamed of as a child (her dreams veered to more lofty professions, like an actress or a paleontologist or, ironically, a doctor), but it was a job that she had the skills for and that, for the most part, she enjoyed. 

Mistress? It wasn’t something that she had ever really considered. Even when she first started working alongside Jeri, from those first days where she sat in the back of the courtroom and grew warm between the legs while she watched Jeri rip the prosecution apart, she never actively entertained the notion. 

But when it happened, when she found herself sleeping with, and then falling for, her married boss, she went along with it. More than that, she _wanted_ it. It may not have been the most morally acceptable act in the world, but at the very least, the relationship between them started out as genuine. She knew that Jeri cared about her; if she had wanted Pam for nothing more than sex, she would have been honest about it from the beginning. And because of her honesty, because Jeri had told her that her marriage with Wendy had, for all intents and purposes, ended years ago, because Jeri actually proposed to her and promised that she would get things with Wendy wrapped up as quickly as possible, Pam had been willing to overlook the morality of it all, had been willing to overlook the slice of guilt that sat heavily in her stomach whenever she saw Wendy or whenever she caught someone at the office whispering about her and Jeri. 

She had been willing to look past and compartmentalize and silence _so_ much, all because of Jeri. 

Wife? 

She had wanted that. She’d wanted that with all her heart. Even when Wendy tried to plant doubts in her mind, inserted snide remarks whenever they encountered each other about how Jeri was using the same playbook with Pam that she had used with Wendy all those years ago, Pam had wanted it. She had wanted the title that Wendy so stubbornly clung to. She wanted to rip it from between Wendy’s clutching fingers and take it for her own. 

But even on the days where she was most frustrated by the situation, the days where she walked into Jeri’s office and was almost bowled over by the sheer amount of fury rolling off her, fury brought on by yet another exchange with Wendy over the phone, even when she smashed into Wendy’s home and found her looming over Jeri with a dripping knife in a blood smeared room, she never wanted to _kill_ her. 

She had just wanted it all to _stop._

But, if she’s learned anything in the past few hours, it’s that what she wants means absolutely nothing.

It’s always been about what _Jeri_ wants. 

The overhead light turns off, and a guard yells for everyone to quiet down, but Pam is barely aware of it. In the center of her chest, blossoming and filling her like some kind of insidious, far-reaching parasite, is nothing less than rage. 

Who has she become? What has happened to her? When did she lose sight of her own personality and ambitions and goals? When did she become a mere extension of Jeri, a puppet to be played with and directed and used? When did she stop thinking for herself? 

She loses herself in the spiral of her mind. Hours tick by, and while she remains on the mattress, dangling feet throbbing with pins and needles whenever she shifts, she does not sleep. She tears through the events that led her to this cold, rank smelling cell, over and over again. On repeat, she walks back into the home that Wendy and Jeri used to share. She sees Wendy looming over Jeri, blood dripping from the knife in her hand. She sees Jeri on the floor, leaking from two dozen separate wounds, with a look in her eyes that Pam has never seen before. 

Fear. 

As if she’s occupying another body, she watches herself hit Wendy in the head with the vase. She hears, over and over again, the wet, meaty _thud_ of Wendy’s skull connecting with the coffee table. And when that thud dies out, she starts right back at the beginning, replays the first time she saw Jeri, the first time their eyes locked. 

Eventually, it all becomes too much. Opening her eyes for the first time in hours, she scrambles off the mattress and manages to make it to the toilet just in time to throw up the meagre dinner she consumed hours ago. The whole process only lasts a few seconds, but as soon as she is done, a blanket of exhaustion drops across her shoulders. Her bed is mere feet away, but she can’t summon the energy to drag herself over to it. Instead, she presses her head to the cool metal of the toilet seat and closes her eyes again. 

There were so many points in the past year where she could have changed everything. She could have said no when Jeri first made a move. She could have reported her to HR. She could have found a different job. She could have tried harder to see Wendy as an actual person with legitimate feelings, rather than the vengeful, bitchy boogeyman that Jeri made her out to be. 

If she had done something, _anything_ , then maybe an innocent woman would still be alive, and Pam wouldn’t have blood clinging to her fingers. 

While dragging herself back to bed seems a near impossible feat, pulling herself up to the sink is more manageable. 

This time, she scrubs at her skin until she can’t tell what is Wendy’s blood and what is her own.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
